Appearing on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle with host Laura Ingraham on Monday night, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani fiercely criticized current New York Mayor Bill de Blasio after the assaults on policemen in Harlem, calling de Blasio a “disgrace” and “completely lazy.” Giuliani also ripped the people responsible for the assault, saying they were “anti-American,” concluding, “You are entitled to say that that is anti-American when you attack the military uniform or a police uniform.”
Giuliani started by asserting, “I saw the reaction of my third police commissioner, Bernie Kerek, to that; I assume my other two would react the same way. That would never happen in a million years when I was mayor of New York. Actually, it wouldn’t happen if we didn’t have a progressive, retrogressive, completely lazy mayor in New York City who is absolutely destroying the quality of life in this city. He’s a disgrace, and actually, even Democrats don’t support him and are embarrassed of him. And to let that happen to a New York City—that poor police officer, his morale has been destroyed.”
Ingraham agreed: “It’s beyond demoralizing.”
Giuliani continued, “The guy’s morale—and the way you reduce crime is to have police officers with high morale. That uniform should be respected. I lost almost 100 police officers in the line of duty. I lost a cousin and I have four uncles who were police officers and when I see that uniform disrespected, it shouldn’t happen in America. That’s anti-American. That is so anti-American —“
Ingraham said, “We’re going to get more of this, I’m afraid in the next several months.”
Giuliani stated, “You are entitled to say that that is anti-American when you attack the military uniform or a police uniform.”
Giuliani’s fury at the treatment of New York police officers is backed by his own story; as George L. Kelling wrote in 2009 of Giuliani’s stewardship of the city during his tenure and the corresponding drop in crime:
Better than any other politician, Rudy Giuliani understood the pent-up demand for public order and built his successful 1993 run for mayor on quality-of-life themes. Once in office, he appointed Bratton, who had orchestrated the subway success and understood the importance of order maintenance, as New York’s police commissioner. Under Bratton, the NYPD brought enormous capacities to bear on the city’s crime problem—particularly Compstat, its tactical planning and accountability system, which identified where crimes were occurring and held local commanders responsible for their areas. Giuliani and Bratton also gave the force’s members a clear vision of the “business” of the NYPD and how their activities contributed to it … Clearly, Giuliani and Bratton were heroes in reclaiming public spaces.
Newt Gingrich echoed in his book “Real Change”:
As mayor in the 1990s, Giuliani implemented fundamental change in policing against enormous resistance and succeeded only because he, his team, and the citizens who supported his effort to lower crime absolutely insisted on it and were cheerfully persistent in doing so. He began with a simple question: “Can you reduce crime?” … The first great breakthrough was the development of the right metrics for reporting. Police forces had historically measured how fast they could answer a 911 call and how many arrests there had been the previous day. Giuliani believed those were the wrong questions. They wanted to know how many crimes had occurred, where they had occurred, an what time they had occurred. They wanted to see if there was a pattern of activity that could be used to develop new strategies and to focus in new ways.
Video below: